Middle Eastern Realities

Obama: Israel construction plans unhelpful

JAKARTA, Indonesia – President Barack Obama has criticized Israel construction plans in East Jerusalem, saying they’re unhelpful to the pursuit of peace.

The president said he was concerned Israel and Palestinian were not making enough of an effort to advance peace negotiations.

Obama’s caution came as the Israeli government moved ahead with plans to build nearly 1,300 apartments in that disputed part of the city.

Israel has said the plans to seek public comment on the building plans were merely procedural. But the move comes on the heels of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s meeting with Vice President Joe Biden on Sunday.

I weep as I witness outrageous verbal attacks on Israel. What makes these verbal assaults and distortions all the more painful is that they are being orchestrated by President Obama.

For me, the situation today recalls what occurred in 70 AD when the Roman emperor Vespasian launched a military campaign against the Jewish nation and its ancient capital of Jerusalem. Ultimately, Masada, a rock plateau in the Judean desert became the last refuge of the Jewish people against the Roman onslaught. I have been to Jerusalem and Masada. From the top of Masada, you can still see the remains of the Roman fortifications and garrisons, and the stones and earth of the Roman siege ramp that was used to reach Masada. The Jews of Masada committed suicide rather than let themselves be taken captive by the Romans.

In Rome itself, I have seen the Arch of Titus with the sculpture showing enslaved Jews and the treasures of the Jewish Temple of Solomon with the Menorah, the symbol of the Jewish state, being carted away as booty during the sacking of Jerusalem.

Oh, you may say, that is a far fetched analogy. Please hear me out.

The most recent sacking of the old city of Jerusalem – its Jewish quarter – took place under the Jordanians in 1948 in the first war between the Jews and the Arabs, with at least five Muslim states – Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq – seeking to destroy the Jewish state. At that time, Jordan conquered East Jerusalem and the West Bank and expelled every Jew living in the Jewish quarter of the old city, destroying every building, including the synagogues in the old quarter and expelling from every part of Judea and Samaria every Jew living there so that for the first time in thousands of years, the old walled city of Jerusalem and the adjacent West Bank were “Judenrein” — a term used by the Nazis to indicate the forced removal or murder of all Jews..

Jews had lived for centuries in Hebron, the city where Abraham, the first Jew, pitched his tent and where he now lies buried, it is believed, in a tomb with his wife, Sarah, as well as other ancient Jewish patriarchs and matriarchs. I have visited that tomb and at the time asked an Israeli soldier guarding it – so that it was open to all pilgrims, Christians, Muslims and Jews — “where is the seventh step leading to the tomb of Abraham and Sarah,” which was the furthest entry for Jews when the Muslims were the authority controlling the holy place? He replied, “When we retook and reunited the whole city of Jerusalem and conquered the West Bank in 1967, we removed the steps, so now everyone can enter,” whereas when Muslims were in charge of the tomb, no Jew could enter it. And I did.

I am not a religious person. I am comfortable in a synagogue, but generally attend only twice a year, on the high holidays. When I entered the tomb of Abraham and Sarah, as I recall, I felt connected with my past and the traditions of my people. One is a Jew first by birth and then by religion. Those who leave their religion, remain Jews forever by virtue of their birth. If they don’t think so, let them ask their neighbors, who will remind them. I recall the words of the columnist Robert Novak, who was for most of his life hostile to the Jewish state of Israel in an interview with a reporter stating that while he had converted to Catholicism, he was still a cultural Jew. I remain with pride a Jew both by religion and culture.

My support for the Jewish state has been long and steadfast. Never have I thought that I would leave the U.S. to go and live in Israel. My loyalty and love is first to the U.S. which has given me, the son of Polish Jewish immigrants, so much. But, I have also long been cognizant of the fact that every night when I went to sleep in peace and safety, there were Jewish communities around the world in danger. And there was one country, Israel, that would give them sanctuary and would send its soldiers to fight for them and deliver them from evil, as Israel did at Entebbe in 1976.

I weep today because my president, Barack Obama, in a few weeks has changed the relationship between the U.S. and Israel from that of closest of allies to one in which there is an absence of trust on both sides. The contrast between how the president and his administration deals with Israel and how it has decided to deal with the Karzai administration in Afghanistan is striking.

The Karzai administration, which operates a corrupt and opium-producing state, refuses to change its corrupt ways – the president’s own brother is believed by many to run the drug traffic taking place in Afghanistan – and shows the utmost contempt for the U.S. is being hailed by the Obama administration as an ally and publicly treated with dignity. Karzai recently even threatened to join the Taliban if we don’t stop making demands on him. Nevertheless, Karzai is receiving a gracious thank-you letter from President Obama. The New York Times of April 10th reported, “…that Mr. Obama had sent Mr. Karzai a thank-you note expressing gratitude to the Afghan leader for dinner in Kabul. ‘It was a respectful letter,’ General Jones said.”

On the other hand, our closest ally – the one with the special relationship with the U.S., has been demeaned and slandered, held responsible by the administration for our problems in Afghanistan and Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East. The plan I suspect is to so weaken the resolve of the Jewish state and its leaders that it will be much easier to impose on Israel an American plan to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, leaving Israel’s needs for security and defensible borders in the lurch.

I believe President Obama’s policy is to create a whole new relationship with the Arab states of Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt, and Iraq as a counter to Iran – The Tyrannosaurus Rex of the Muslim world which we are now prepared to see in possession of a nuclear weapon. If throwing Israel under the bus is needed to accomplish this alliance, so be it.

I am shocked by the lack of outrage on the part of Israel’s most ardent supporters. The members of AIPAC, the chief pro-Israel lobbying organization in Washington, gave Secretary of State Hillary Clinton a standing ovation after she had carried out the instructions of President Obama and, in a 43-minute telephone call, angrily hectored Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Members of Congress in both the House and Senate have made pitifully weak statements against Obama’s mistreatment of Israel, if they made any at all. The Democratic members, in particular, are weak. They are simply afraid to criticize President Obama.

What bothers me most of all is the shameful silence and lack of action by community leaders – Jew and Christian. Where are they? If this were a civil rights matter, the Jews would be in the mall in Washington protesting with and on behalf of our fellow American citizens. I asked one prominent Jewish leader why no one is preparing a march on Washington similar to the one in 1963 at which I was present and Martin Luther King’s memorable speech was given? His reply was “Fifty people might come.” Remember the 1930s? Few stood up. They were silent. Remember the most insightful statement of one of our greatest teachers, Rabbi Hillel: “If I am not for myself, who is for me? And if I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?”

We have indeed stood up for everyone else. When will we stand up for our brothers and sisters living in the Jewish state of Israel?

If Obama is seeking to build a siege ramp around Israel, the Jews of modern Israel will not commit suicide. They are willing to negotiate a settlement with the Palestinians, but they will not allow themselves to be bullied into following self-destructive policies.

To those who call me an alarmist, I reply that I’ll be happy to apologize if I am proven wrong. But those who stand silently by and watch the Obama administration abandon Israel, to whom will they apologize?

Wasting no time, Obama instructed his battle-ax Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to entertain Mr. Netanyahu with a 45 minute phone call rebuking him for the slight. She called the incident “an insult to the United States.” (God, could you imagine 45 minutes on the phone with an “outraged” Hillary?)

Pul-ease.

Her indignation is pathetic, considering her husband’s presidential library was practically built with money provided by Israel’s sworn enemies.

Obama and his anti-semitic administration pounce on any opportunity to lash the whipping boy of the Middle East, and he’s jumped on it like white on rice. If he can make it look like Israel’s fault, so much the better.

Discrediting and weakening Israel’s standing on the world stage has been this administrations policy from the beginning.

Obama’s Middle Eastern Apology tour was little more than an inter-national rebuke of Israel, cloaked in winning the “hearts and minds” of corrupt and hostile Arab governments.

He sat in a pew for twenty years and listened to an anti-semitic lunatic preach hatred for the United States, white people, and Jews.

In September of 2009, he held a formal celebration of the Islamic Holy Month of Ramadan, where he claimed “we celebrate a great religion and its commitment to justice and progress” and “the contribution of Muslims to the United States are too long to catalog because Muslims are so interwoven into the fabric of our communities and our country.”

Go ahead and read that again. (Just make sure to vomit on your mouse pad, and NOT on your laptop.)

He then went on to cut the State dinner in half for honoring the Jewish observance of Hanukkah, siting cost as the culprit.

His entire Israeli/Palestinian plan consists of pushing concessions out of the Jewish state, claiming any settlement building to be “counter-productive” of the process.

Of his Palestinian friends, he only asked that they recognize Israel’s right to exist.

Gee, that’s some mighty slick incentive, Barry.

It is, however, his tough stance on Iran which shows his limp commitment to protecting our only Democratic ally in the region (that would be Israel for all you liberals out there). This tactic, where, every time Iran tells the world to go to hell and Israel will be destroyed, is countered with a firm verbal foot-stomping by Obama and his State department, followed by EU and UN calls for Israel to show restraint.

Does anyone believe any nation besides Israel will do what will eventually be necessary when the Iranian nuclear threat gets to the point of no return? The U.S., under Obama, will not have the stones to engage in what will need to be required: The forceable destruction of Iranian nuclear development.

All of his meaningless rhetoric and Muslim foot-licking will amount to nothing but continued attacks on any position or action taken by Israel concerning anything of import to their survival and progress in a region filled with vipers on all borders. NONE of the outraged surrounding Arab states engage in any helpful activities toward the Palestinians, simply because they don’t want to. The Palestinian issue provides them with a perpetual reason for anger with Israel, and Obama knows this.

His silence in condemning these states and his unwillingness toward achieving concessions from them makes him complicit in their vitriol spewed toward the Jewish nation.

All Israel can do now is what it feels is right for Israel.

And if that means dealing with a meaningless hissy-fit once in a while from Obama and the most anti-semitic administration since Carter, than so be it.

Samau’ al al-Maghribi converted to Islam from Judaism in 1163 C.E., and shortly afterward wrote an anti-Jewish polemic entitled Silencing the Jews. Al-Maghribi’s “Silencing” — ostensibly a “philosophical” tract — employs Islamic Biblical criticism to characterize the Jews as ignorant, unreasonable, and hypocritical, complemented by their Koranic depiction[1] as accursed prophet-killers who transgress Allah’s will, corrupt his message, and harbor the most intense hatred for the Muslims. Moshe Perlmann[2] (d. 2001) translated al-Maghribi’s tract into English and was the preeminent scholar of Islam’s medieval polemic against the Jews. In his introduction to Silencing, Perlmann (in 1964) observed that this literature was redolent with motifs from the Muslim creed’s foundational texts:

The Koran[1], of course became a mine of anti-Jewish passages. The hadith[3] did not lag behind. Popular preachers used and embellished such material.

In an earlier study (published 1948) of 11th century Muslim Spain — idealized, falsely, as the paragon of Islam’s ecumenism — Perlmann[2] had described how such polemical tracts and sermons incited the mass violence which destroyed the Jewish community of Granada during the catastrophic 1066 pogrom. Its death toll of some 3000 to 4000 Jews exceeded the number of Jews reportedly killed by the Crusaders during their pillage of the Rhineland, some thirty years later, at the outset of the First Crusade.

Last week, the National Post[4] of Canada published an editorial and subsequent comments[5] (see comments section, 7:20 PM) by Tarek Fatah — self-proclaimed “hardened secular Muslim[4]” and much-ballyhooed Muslim moderate — addressing Canada’s Jews and the Jewish community at large. Nearly 850 years after al-Maghribi, Fatah’s defamatory screeds abandon any façade of philosophical debate in his transparent effort to silence discussion of Islam by modern Jews.

The pretense for Fatah’s diatribe was an appearance by intrepid Muslim freethinker Wafa Sultan[6] at a Toronto synagogue. Canadian journalist Joanne Hill, who attended (and recorded) the event, wrote an assiduously documented reply[5] to Fatah at the National Post exploding his mendacious claims about Sultan’s alleged “intent.” As I will demonstrate, Fatah’s remarks ignore (in order to bowdlerize) what Islam’s foundational texts state plainly about the Muslim prophet Muhammad’s behaviors towards his child bride Aisha and the Jews of Medina and Khaybar. Fatah’s rant then maliciously castigates Wafa Sultan’s Jewish audience — consistent with Islamic law (Sharia) precepts regarding “blasphemy[7]” that the “hardened secularist” Fatah claims to reject — for daring to have such an uncensored, “blasphemous[7]” discussion of Islam’s prophet:

Not one member of the audience found it objectionable that a synagogue was being used to slam the Prophet of Islam as a child rapist. Not one person raised an objection. We were reminded that the synagogue was a “house of sanctuary” and that anyone causing trouble will be expelled from the assembly. Yet, calling the founder of Islam a child rapist was deemed totally appropriate. Referring to Muhammad as a Jew killer seemed just fine to the 500 attendees.

According to Canadian law[8], for example, statutory rape is sexual intercourse with anyone under the age of 14 — a punishable offense unless both parties are aged within two years of each other, or the accused is aged 12 to 13. Here is how the two most important canonical hadith collections[3] describe Muhammad’s “relationship” with Aisha — their “marriage contract” and its sexual consummation — when the Muslim prophet was some four decades older than his child bride:

Sahih Muslim, Book 008, Number 3311[9]: Aisha (Allah be pleased with her) reported that Allah’s Apostle (may peace be upon him) married her when she was seven years old, and she was taken to his house as a bride when she was nine, and her dolls were with her; and when he (the Holy Prophet) died she was eighteen years old.

Sahih Bukhari, Volume 7, Book 62, Number 88[10]: Narrated Ursa: The Prophet wrote the (marriage contract) with Aisha while she was six years old and consummated his marriage with her while she was nine years old and she remained with him for nine years (i.e., till his death).

Sahih Bukhari, Volume 8, Book 73, Number 151[11]: Narrated Aisha: I used to play with the dolls in the presence of the Prophet, and my girl friends also used to play with me. When Allah’s Apostle used to enter (my dwelling place) they used to hide themselves, but the Prophet would call them to join and play with me. (The playing with the dolls and similar images is forbidden, but it was allowed for Aisha at that time, as she was a little girl, who had not yet reached the age of puberty.) (Fateh-al-Bari page 143, Vol.13)

Sahih Muslim, Book 031, Number 5981[12]: Aisha reported that she used to play with dolls in the presence of Allah’s Messenger (may peace be upon him) and when her playmates came to her they left (the house) because they felt shy of Allah’s Messenger (may peace be upon him), whereas Allah’s Messenger (may peace be upon him) sent them to her.

Tarek Fatah also conveniently ignores the virulently anti-Semitic motifs in the Koran[1] which sanctioned Muhammad’s murderous brutality towards the Jews, as described graphically in the hadith and pious Muslim biographies[3] (or “sira”) of the Muslim prophet.

The Koran’s overall discussion of the Jews[1] is marked by a litany of their sins and punishments, as if part of a divine indictment, conviction, and punishment process. The Jews’ ultimate sin and punishment are made clear: they are the devil’s minions (4:60) cursed by Allah, their faces will be obliterated (4:47), and if they do not accept the true faith of Islam — the Jews who understand their faith become Muslims (3:113) — they will be made into apes (2:65/7:166), or apes and swine (5:60), and burn in the Hellfires (4:55, 5:29, 98:6, and 58:14-19).

The Koranic curse upon the Jews for (primarily) rejecting, even slaying Allah’s prophets (verses 2:61/3:112), including Isa/Jesus (or at least his “body double” 4:157-4:158), is updated with perfect archetypal logic in the canonical hadith: following the Muslims’ initial conquest of the Jewish farming oasis of Khaybar, one of the vanquished Jewesses reportedly served Muhammad poisoned mutton (or goat), which resulted, ultimately, in his protracted, agonizing death. And Ibn Saad’s sira account maintains that Muhammad’s poisoning resulted from a well-coordinated Jewish conspiracy.

It is worth recounting — as depicted in the Muslim sources — the events that antedated Muhammad’s reputed poisoning at Khaybar.

Muhammad’s failures or incomplete successes were consistently recompensed by murderous attacks on the Jews. The Muslim prophet-warrior developed a penchant for assassinating individual Jews and destroying Jewish communities — by expropriation and expulsion (Banu Quaynuqa and B. Nadir), or massacring their men and enslaving their women and children (Banu Qurayza). Just before subduing the Medinan Jewish tribe Banu Qurayza and orchestrating the mass execution of their adult males, Muhammad invoked perhaps the most striking Koranic motif for the Jews debasement — he addressed these Jews, with hateful disparagement, as “You brothers of apes.” Subsequently, in the case of the Khaybar Jews, Muhammad had the male leadership killed and plundered their riches. The terrorized Khaybar survivors — industrious Jewish farmers — became prototype subjugated dhimmis whose productivity was extracted by the Muslims as a form of permanent booty. (And according to the Muslim sources, even this tenuous vassalage was arbitrarily terminated within a decade of Muhammad’s death when Caliph Umar expelled the Jews of Khaybar.)

And Muhammad’s own depictions of “the end of times” (Muslim eschatology) in the hadith[3] highlight the Jews supreme hostility to Islam, condemning them to annihilation. Jews are described as adherents of the Dajjâl — the Muslim equivalent of the Antichrist — and as per another tradition, the Dajjâl is in fact Jewish. At the Dajjâl’s appearance, other traditions state that the Dajjâl will be accompanied by 70,000 Jews from Isfahan, or Jerusalem. When the Dajjâl is defeated, he and his Jewish companions will be slaughtered — everything will deliver them up except for the so-called gharkad tree.

Thus, according to a canonical hadith — incorporated into the 1988 Hamas Charter (article 7) — if a Jew seeks refuge under a tree or a stone, these objects will be able to speak to tell a Muslim: “There is a Jew behind me; come and kill him!”

Thus Maimonides (d. 1203), the renowned Talmudist, philosopher, astronomer, and physician, as noted by historian Salo Baron (from Baron’s essay “The Historical Outlook of Maimonides” in Proc of the Amer Acad for Jewish Res, vol. 6, 1934-35, p. 82), emphasizes the bellicose “madness” of Muhammad and his quest for political control. Muhammad’s mindset, and the actions it engendered, had immediate and long-term tragic consequences for Jews — from his massacring up to 24,000 Jews to their chronic oppression — as described in the Islamic sources by Muslims themselves:

Following an apparently prevalent usage [Maimonides] calls the founder of Islam a “madman,” [meshugga] with both religious and political aspirations, who failed to formulate any new religious ideas but merely restated well-known concepts. Nevertheless, he attracted a large following and inflicted many wrongs upon the Jews, being himself responsible for the massacre of 24,000. Following his example the Muslims of the subsequent generations oppressed the Jews and debased them even more harshly than any other nation.

For over a thousand years, since its founding in 792 C.E., Al-Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt, has served as the academic shrine — much as Mecca is the religious shrine — of the global Muslim community. Al-Azhar University (and its mosque) represent the pinnacle of Islamic religious education.

A front-page New York Times story[13] published on January 10, 2009, included extracts from the Friday sermon (of the day before) at Al-Azhar mosque pronounced by Egyptian-government appointed cleric Sheik Eid Abdel Hamid Youssef. Referencing well-established anti-Semitic motifs from the Koran[14], Sheikh Youssef intoned:

Muslim brothers, God has inflicted the Muslim nation with a people whom God has become angry at [Koran 1:7[15]] and whom he cursed [Koran 5:78[16]] so he made monkeys and pigs [Koran 5:60[17]] out of them. They killed prophets and messengers [Koran 2:61[18] / 3:112[19]] and sowed corruption on Earth. [Koran 5:33[20] / 5:64[21]] They are the most evil on Earth. [5:62[22] /63[23]]

At present, the continual, monotonous invocation by Al-Azhar clerics of anti-Semitic motifs from the Koran (and other foundational Muslim texts[24]) is entirely consistent with the published writings and statements of Sheikh Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi — Grand Imam of this preeminent Islamic religious institution from 1996 until his recent passing. Tantawi’s academic magnum opus, Jews in the Koran and the Traditions[2], a 700-page treatise, elucidates the classical, mainstream theology of Islamic Jew-hatred:

[The] Koran describes the Jews with their own particular degenerate characteristics, i.e. killing the prophets of Allah [Koran 2:61[18]/ 3:112[19]], corrupting His words by putting them in the wrong places, consuming the people’s wealth frivolously, refusal to distance themselves from the evil they do, and other ugly characteristics caused by their deep-rooted lasciviousness … only a minority of the Jews keep their word. … [A]ll Jews are not the same. The good ones become Muslims [Koran 3:113[25]], the bad ones do not.

Tarek Fatah, other so-called Muslim moderates of his ilk, and their non-Muslim promoters must be compelled to answer the following question: is it “Islamophobia[4]” to quote such statements — rife with Koranic Jew-hatred, and made by authoritative Muslim clerics representing the Vatican of Sunni Islam — or are Mr. Fatah’s reactions, ignoring the existence of these commonplace, normative Islamic proclamations, and vilifying those who bring them to public attention, especially pernicious forms of taqiyya[26] (religiously sanctioned Islamic dissimulation) and Islamic Jew-hatred?

Elaborating on the depth of Muslim hatred for the Jews in his era, Maimonides[27] (in ~ 1172 C.E.) made this profound observation regarding the Jewish predilection for denial, a feature that he insists will hasten their destruction:

We have acquiesced, both old and young, to inure ourselves to humiliation. … All this notwithstanding, we do not escape this continued maltreatment [by Muslims] which well nigh crushes us. No matter how much we suffer and elect to remain at peace with them, they stir up strife and sedition.

The Jews and their communal leaders like Maimonides living under Islamic rule in the Middle Ages — vanquished by jihad, isolated, and well-nigh defenseless under the repressive system of dhimmitude — can be excused for their silent, submissive denial. There is no such excuse in our era for silently submitting to the threats of disingenuous, hateful Muslim bullies like Tarek Fatah, given the existence of an autonomous Jewish state of Israel and a thriving Western Jewish diaspora, particularly here in the United States, living under the blanket of hard-won protections for their religious freedom, physical security, and dignity.

Is the White House Emotionally Lashing Out at Israel?

When certain kinds of people feel frustrated, they lash out at the nearest target. Speculation has been rife about the extraordinarily grandiose character of this White House. So far, most of its major initiatives, trumpeted with major fanfares on the international stage, have simply crashed. The danger is that a frustrated inner circle in the White House may be striking out at victims who cannot respond. This is particularly true for the recent coordinated and rageful attacks on Israel from the White House, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden, Jr.

Health care is stuck. Immigration “reform” is stuck. The economy is scraping bottom. The Copenhagen Treaty blew up. The president’s popularity has plummeted. Outreach to the Arab world hasn’t yielded any results. The Iranians are still going for their nukes. Nothing has been done about North Korean and Pakistani nuclear proliferation. Obama is pursuing Bush policies in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq. The world is getting more dangerous every day, and the White House looks increasingly impotent in the face of fast-mounting danger.

In a White House of unprecedented ambition and grandiosity, this has to be very, very frustrating. Several pundits have called the mood in the White House “lugubrious,” “gloomy,” “indignant,” “funereal,” “moping” — sentiments befitting a “gloomy pessimist.”

When Veep Joe Biden visited Israel recently, housing bureaucrats announced the fourth stage of approval in a seven-stage process that would build 1,600 new apartment units in an existing Jewish neighborhood of Jerusalem. Biden reacted with an instant diplomatic slap at Prime Minister Netanyahu, deliberately coming ninety minutes late to a dinner given in his honor. The White House was enraged, and the president apparently ordered a coordinated public critique of Israel by Biden, Hillary Clinton, and David Axelrod. The Western leftist press immediately jumped on its favorite scapegoat, from the New York Times to the London Guardian. Taking a cue from the Obama administration, Arabs throughout the West Bank and Jerusalem went on a violent rampage, threatening a recently rebuilt synagogue that was destroyed by the Jordanians in 1948.

If Obama intended this as a punishment for Netanyahu, it was utterly ineffective. The Israelis have pretty contentious politics, but the one thing that unites them is a common enemy. Obama was immediately accused of anti-Semitism by Netanyahu’s brother-in-law. The Left in Israel reluctantly fell in behind the Prime Minister. When rumors spread that Obama wanted to boost the opposition Kadima party, their stock immediately fell. People don’t like to be told what to do by foreigners, especially if they suspect an underlying enmity. Obama is a third-world socialist, and he therefore sees Israel (and the rest of the world) through the lens of post-colonial hatred of “imperialist” nations like Britain, America, and Israel. That’s why those apartments in Jerusalem are called “settlements” in the leftist press.

The Netanyahu government immediately apologized, pointing out that the building decision was made locally, perhaps even without notifying the Prime Minister at all, and that nobody in Israel ever contemplated giving up established Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem, even potentially

There are two possibilities. One is that Netanyahu was genuinely caught unawares. The other is that he knew what was going to happen. Regardless of which of those may be true, the result is a major setback for the Obama administration and any hopes it may have for another “photo-op peace agreement” like Bill Clinton’s photo-op Oslo agreement. As far as Israelis are concerned, Obama has just torn off the mask.

Netanyahu is now much more solidly entrenched than he was before the Obama spat. Obama has now backed off and has even sorta kinda apologized…or at least he’s claimed that the relationship with Israel is still strong and positive. That is false. This is a predictable breakdown in relations, and so far, Obama has gotten the worst of it. Any moves he makes after this point to mollify the Palestinians and Iran will be seen in the light of this uncontrolled emotional spat.

It is entirely possible that Netanyahu is strategic enough to want the Obama administration to expose its antipathy to Israel in public. Now he can try to exact concessions from the administration because Obama is no longer considered an impartial mediator. (He never was, in all probability, but letting the mask slip in public now makes it obvious to the world, including American voters.)

From a diplomatic viewpoint, this was a major mistake by Obama, Clinton, and Joe Biden. If they had to react to the 1,600 new apartments, they should have done so with dignity and balance. They didn’t. They blew it because they took a routine building announcement as a personal affront. As a result, Israel is more unified today than it was before Joe Biden came to visit.

There’s no way to know for sure what will happen next. One thing that’s clear is that Obama’s team is still immature, fumbling, and easily triggered to react in predictable ways. The Iranians know that. So do the Israelis. All the other shrewdies in the world are taking notes. If they were playing poker, Obama would be a marked man.

Obama has promised to significantly cut defense spending, including saying “I will slow our development of future combat systems.”

John McCain has vowed: “We must continue to deploy a safe and reliable nuclear deterrent, robust missile defenses and superior conventional forces that are capable of defending the United States and our allies.”

In a 2001 interview, Obama said he regretted that the Supreme Court “didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution.”

In the same interview, Obama criticized the Supreme Court because it “never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society.”

Obama has focused on empathy, rather than legal reasoning and restraint, as his basis for appointing judges, saying, “We need somebody who’s got the heart, the empathy…to understand what it’s like to be poor, or African-American, or gay, or disabled, or old.”

McCain opposes judicial activism, saying, “my nominees will understand that there are clear limits to the scope of judicial power.”